terrorist attack

By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban

There were 212 antisemitic crimes committed in Montreal since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and reported to the SPVM, it was revealed during a press conference held by Federation CJA board chairman Steve Sebag and Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs Quebec vice-president Eta Yudin.

“One is too many, and we’re looking at numbers that are just not anything we could have imagined just a couple of years ago,” Yudin said. “This is a beautiful place — Montreal, Quebec— is very special. Anywhere you go in the world, Montreal has this reputation of being such a fantastic place and we have to work really hard to protect that as a society.This is everyone’s fight, it’s an attack on democracy. It begins with the Jews, it does not end with the Jews. If we value and cherish our way of life and our values, we have to fight together to protect them.”

Sebag said that antisemitism is a sickness that touches all of society. “Sadly, it is often a precursor of racism and intolerance…enough is enough.”

The press conference was called last week to send the message that more has to be done to counter the many antisemitic incidents that have taken place in the city, including shots fired at three Jewish schools, firebombings of Jewish institutions, declarations of hate, harassment and intimidation at schools, and much more.

At another point in the press conference, Yudin said that “we know our community underreports [hate incidents], we know that people ask themselves ‘what’s the point of reporting?’ Its important to report. If we want law and order officials and police to do their job, they need to understand statistically and geographically exactly what’s happening.”

“We’re talking about harassment and incitement to violence,” Sebag said. “Those are pretty clear cut.”

In light of the community underreporting incidents, The Suburban asked what the actual number of hate incidents could possibly be.

Yudin responded that “we get a lot of word of mouth stories that we can’t do anything with, so we know they happened to someone’s cousin, someone’s neighbour, but we don’t have, statistically, enough data to use it, so we don’t, but we know it’s out there and I encourage those people to report.” n